Chapter 2301: Eye of the Raven

Chapter 2301: Chapter 2301: Eye of the Raven

Even without looking closely, Shard could feel the Whisper Element unique to Relics emanating from the pile of weeds and branches before him.

A bit excited, he set Mia on his shoulder and stepped into that absurdly large Raven’s Nest. After a simple search, he indeed found a big pile of gemstones and metal jewelry.

There were of course shiny Gold Coins among them, but unfortunately only two Relic Coins, and both were Poet-Level [Egg of the King]. This made Shard suspect that the crow form Fanarius used might actually be a female crow.

With that, the number of Special Coins in Shard’s hand suddenly rose to eight, and the final harvest from the Raven’s Nest wasn’t just these.

Shard didn’t intend to leave this nest intact, so after he finished searching he used fire to ignite the already highly flammable pile of weeds. As abnormal black smoke rolled upward toward the sky and the blaze lasted a full half hour, Shard then searched the ashes left after the Raven’s Nest burned and found a ring and three black Raven Feathers sharper than small knives.

Only the ring was a Relic; the Raven Feathers still carried a heavy residue of Demon Power, clearly Demon Material.

Out of caution, Shard gathered those feathers up, intending to give them to the doctor, and then noticed that the cat on his shoulder seemed interested in that black ring.

The ring’s band looked like black jade, and the oval bezel strongly resembled a crow’s eye. The band appeared smooth, but in fact had some hard-to-detect etched lines. After Shard rubbed them with his fingertips, he read the meaning those engravings represented:

[The reversal of blindness and sight is the reflection of the soul’s essence.]

"Mm... very familiar phrasing."

He thought for a moment, reached out to pat the cat’s head as a way of soothing her, then slipped the ring onto his own finger and turned to gaze out at the scenery of the black forest.

Shard’s eyesight was already exceptional, and this was a high vantage point, plus the rain-washed mountains and woods had nothing blocking his view. So this time he actually saw the cityscape of Moon Bay City to the south directly, and with incredible clarity:

"So that’s what it is, a Scribe Level Relic—Eye of the Raven."

Scribe Level Relic [Eye of the Raven]—judging from the name it sounds like a Demon Eye, but it’s actually a ring. This Relic is quite famous; many Sharpshooters have owned it, and its most outstanding effect is granting the wearer extraordinary eyesight.

Wearing the ring and rubbing the bezel produces an effect even better than raising a telescope, because the ring’s power can even prevent the eyes from being hindered by ordinary mist.

Besides granting Transcendent vision, this Relic can also restore a blind person’s sight, or cancel out "blindness" effects caused by other Relics.

This reminded Shard of the [Mood Ring] he had obtained in the Green Lake Region with the help of Megan and Audrey.

The Poet-Level Relic [Mood Ring] functions to strengthen specific emotions and counteract emotional wear, which can resist the Ring of Immortality’s Negative Traits of "grinding down emotions." But the Mood Ring’s own trait of resisting Relic Properties in turn causes blindness.

Now the Eye of the Raven just happens to restrain the Mood Ring’s Negative Traits, but along with that comes the Eye of the Raven’s own Trait:

"If I remember correctly, the Eye of the Raven’s negative effects are mainly in two aspects.

First is ’Raven’s Curiosity,’ which greatly amplifies the user’s curiosity. That’s not a big problem; you only need to keep yourself in check;

The key point is, this Relic brings the ’Raven’s Curse,’ causing black feathers to gradually grow on the user’s body, and it’s almost irreversible. As a result, every holder of the Eye of the Raven throughout history has only kept it for a short time before voluntarily giving it up."

[Outlander, the current intensity of the Fire of the Primordial can completely shield you from the effects of the Raven’s Curse.]

"That’s a relief."

Shard nodded, then felt the cat poking him with her tail. He turned his head, and sure enough, those large amber eyes were looking at him. Even though Shard didn’t understand cat language or mind-reading, he could still read her thoughts at this moment.

So Shard patted the cat’s head again:

"I knew you’d like this ring. I’ll let you play with it after we go back."

As long as the Eye of the Raven’s effect wasn’t triggered, he didn’t have to worry about Mia suddenly turning into a "Raven Cat." If it was just looped around her tail, then it was merely a slightly dangerous ordinary toy.

"Meow~"

The cat called softly, and although Shard verbally refused to let Mia play with it, he himself was quite interested in the Eye of the Raven.

Since he wouldn’t encounter anyone on this remote hill of the black forest anyway, he took out the silver crescent-shaped jade from his pocket.

Holding the "jade" in his left hand and raising it in front of his body, as the "jade" glowed faintly and stretched vertically up and down, the beautiful Sage-Level Relic—[Stigmata of the Stars] longbow appeared in Shard’s hand.

He drew the bow and loosed an arrow; the bow itself had the effect of enhancing his vision, and now combined with the [Eye of the Raven], Shard could clearly see, in the window glass of a tall building in the northern part of the city, a man standing at the window smoking.

This was already beyond merely having excellent eyesight; the two Relics used together were producing an even more remarkable effect. It was a very classic example of Relics being used in combination.

Maintaining the bright silver arrow that had appeared in his hand, Shard adjusted his aim again, trying to probe just how far his vision could go in this state.

He never did manage to find the limit in the end; he merely discovered that in this aiming state, not only was his sight enhanced, his gaze could even penetrate certain thinner substances to see what lay behind and within them. For example: grimy glass, pools with algae drifting in them, or tree crowns made up of sparse leaves.

In other words, he could in this state achieve a certain degree of X-ray vision:

"So, if I can find a higher vantage point, I could snipe some enemy in the city from far away, and they’d die without ever knowing who did it... No, wait—high-energy, high-speed flying objects entering the airspace over the city would definitely trigger a reaction from the church."

Thinking as he moved, Shard continued turning in place:

"Hm?"

Something strange appeared in his field of view—a flying creature—and it didn’t seem to be very far away.

Shard lowered the bow from his hand and looked with his own eyes, but there was nothing whatsoever in the sky in that direction.

He raised the longbow again, and that thing, which looked very much like a Flying Dragon, reappeared—and seemed to have already noticed him:

"Oh, so it’s not just partial X-ray vision; I can also pierce a certain degree of Illusion Technique."

As that thought flashed through his mind, Shard released the arrow clamped in his left hand. A streak of Silver Light pierced the rain-washed, sapphire-blue sky, then passed straight through the mouth of the Half-Blood Dragon Beast that was charging toward him, and burst out again from the tail vertebra at its rear.

The Dragon Beast—its bloodline mixed with gods knew what—kept its posture, gliding on through the air, then fell into the Black Forest below, startling up a cloud of Flying Birds and dust.

Not actually very skilled with bow-type Weapons, Shard stowed away the [Stigmata of the Stars], patted Mia’s little head, then put the cat away as well. He leapt down from the ruined castle and transformed into a swarm of Red Butterflies, flying into the forest.

A few minutes later, by the time the unfamiliar Circle Sorcerer who had hurried over found the fallen Dragon Beast in the woods, Shard was already waiting beside the Corpse of that monster.

The two of them wasted no words; Four-Ring Life Rings appeared behind the stranger at the same time, and then two incoming Moonlight Rings restrained that Four-Ring Sorcerer.

"Has the [Dragon Feast Cult] run out of people?"

Shard asked suspiciously, but didn’t actually expect him to answer.

He slipped on the Mind Crystal Ring and drove out two punches, gifting the man a peaceful sleep. He was planning to take some of his blood and use [Echo of Blood] to track where he’d come from, but before Shard could do that, a dull boom suddenly sounded from the distance, and the faint Vibration in the ground shook loose a few leaves that drifted down onto Shard’s shoulders:

"Looks like I don’t need to go looking for them."

Shard sprang lightly, turned into a Butterfly Swarm, and alighted on a treetop. After returning to human form, he rubbed the [Eye of the Raven] on his hand and stood on the branch, gazing into the distance.

Deep in the forest, far away, there was a small village, and very obvious traces of Circle Sorcerer combat were rapidly spreading there. The fight seemed to have just broken out; judging from the residual reactions of Divine Arts, one side appeared to be Circle Sorcerers from the Dawn Church and the Sun Church, while the other side, as expected, should be the [Dragon Feast Cult].

"What a coincidence, the Churches are running an operation out here?"

And so, under the Sunshine, the Red Butterfly Group skimmed lightly above the Forest Sea.

Elven Village lay northwest of Moon Bay City, hidden in the Black Forest—an extremely inconspicuous little village that only appeared on the very most detailed maps of the Moon Bay Region.

Unremarkable as it was, the village had its own uses—for instance, being taken by certain unremarkable people as a base for biological experiments and Dragon Beast incubation. But no matter how unremarkable people think they are, they get noticed every now and then, and thus came the Churches’ operation this afternoon.

Of course, the joint action of the Dawn Church and the Sun Church did not achieve an overwhelming, crushing victory.

But that, too, had been expected. The Churches had learned in advance, through Investigation, that an important [Dragon Feast Ceremony] was scheduled for this afternoon at this inconspicuous Dragon Beast incubation base. Not only would some big shots of the Dragon Feast Cult be present, even the cult’s most mysterious "Dragon Feast Sacrificial Ground" would appear here.

For that reason, the team dispatched by the Churches this time was not only led by the local Thirteen-Ring Sorcerer of the Dawn Church, "Radiant Hand" Joshua Brooklyn; even The Chosen One Iluna Beath had set out with them to guarantee security.

As the first large-scale operation the Moon Bay Parish had ever launched against the [Dragon Feast Cult], Iluna hadn’t even managed to find a way to notify Shard before the action began.

And when she stood at the threshing ground that once lay on the village outskirts and saw, with her own eyes, the "Dragon Feast Sacrificial Ground" that had seemingly been Shifted here as a whole, and the indescribably eerie "Dragon Feast Ceremony," she no longer had the mind to think about any of that.